God’s servants are not mercenaries. We do not serve our God for gain. And God’s servants are not slaves. We do not serve our God because of fear. God’s servants are all volunteer, bond-servants, serving the Lord God because they desire to serve him. — O my Master, make me a faithful servant!

And, Now, As Dawns Another Year — Don Fortner
(Tune: #118 — When I Survey — LM)

My God, Your mercy, love and grace
Have led me through this wilderness;
And, though my sins oft bring me woe,
Your goodness is unchanged, I know.

While viewing all my days now past,
With shame, my sin I must confess.
Yet, grace unchanging, rich and free,
Abides forever sure for me!

And, now, as dawns another year,
I cast myself upon Your care,
Dependent on Your boundless grace
To keep me seeking, Lord, Your face.

Revive Your work, O Lord, in me!
Subdue my sin, cause me to be
Watchful in prayer and filled with praise.
Guide me in my appointed ways.

Savior, teach me to live by faith,
Triumphant over sin and death,
To walk in love and others bless,
While sweetly leaning on Your breast.

“I do not expect to be saved by a rule, but if I am saved I shall be ruled.” Rowland Hill

The apostle Paul refers to death as ‘the last enemy to be destroyed’ (1 Cor.15:26). When it has struck us, nothing is left the same. In medical terms the heart ceases to beat; in Christian terms, the spirit is separated from the body (James 2:26). The family is left with the melancholy duty of organising the disposal of the body, and the potentially disruptive duty of distributing the worldly goods of the deceased. The tributes are paid, and those left behind have a lingering and growing anxiety that this is yet another reminder of their own frailty and mortality.

Indeed, we all have the same problem. In Adam all die (1 Cor.15:22), and since we are all descended from Adam we are all subject to death. We sin and we die. Unless the Lord Jesus returns first, we will know what it is to cease breathing, and to have our spirits depart our bodies. Some may be famous, popular, wealthy, gifted, and much envied — but we all die. Invariably there are regrets. When the mother of Edith Schaeffer died, Edith wept, and cried: “Oh, but I wanted to tell her about ...” When Joy Davidman died of cancer in 1960, C. S. Lewis brooded: “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” When his beloved wife, Mary, died in 1790, John Newton was shattered: “the world seemed to die with her”. There is the human dilemma: death is both painful and inevitable. We ought to think about it, but we do not like to think about it.

Yet think about it we must. It was the rich fool in Jesus’ parable who thought that life would go on and on, with bigger and better storage barns, and more relaxation, eating, drinking, and making merry (Luke 12:12-21). It is alarming how often one hears eulogies along the lines of ‘He just wanted to have fun and enjoy’, as if hedonism were the pinnacle of the virtues. The judgment of God is as shattering now as it was then: ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ (Luke 12:20)

Western societies today are fond of the delusion that somehow someone or something will save everybody – or at least everybody except Adolf Hitler... although Christ Himself said that the wicked will go into everlasting punishment while the righteous will go into everlasting life (Matt.25:46).

In truth, we are all in the hands of the Creator who made us. Our days were written in His book before we were formed in our mother’s womb, when as yet there were no days (Psalm 139:16). The contemplation of the sovereignty of God led Richard Baxter to submit: “Lord, what thou wilt; when thou wilt; how thou wilt.” This sovereign Creator is made known in His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, who died and rose from the dead. Hence He can say: “I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev.1:18). Those who have not turned to Christ in repentance and faith remain dead in Adam. Those who have turned to Christ in repentance and faith have moved from death to life. The last enemy is defeated, and the believer shares in the victory of Christ forever.

“Ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price.” Is that true? Do you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ? Has he bought you with his precious blood? If so, this is in every way a reasonable deduction: — “Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God’s.” Is that reasonable? Is this not an inference which commends itself at once to your conscience? Not only is it reasonable, it demands our attention and assent, because it is the Word of God himself.

If I am not my own, if I have been purchased and redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, I ought to be utterly consecrated to God my Savior, dedicated entirely to him. Anything less would be worse than base ingratitude. Anything less would be robbery. Indeed, that is exactly what God calls it in Malachi 3:8.

This matter of robbing God goes far beyond paying tithes or not paying tithes. It involves the totality of our lives. Every faculty and talent, great or small, God has given me, every possession, everything I call my own belongs to my God. That which I possess, he has put into my hands, he has trusted to my hands to use for him: His Honor and Glory, His People, His Church, His Kingdom, His Gospel, His Cause. I am not responsible to the Lord for what he has not bestowed upon me; but I am responsible for all that he has trusted to me. I am not responsible for what he has put in your hands; but I am responsible for what he has put in my hands. And everything he has trusted to my hands, as a steward in his house, be it ever so little or ever so great, is to be consecrated to and employed for his glory.

I do not much like the word “duty” as a motivator; but the Scriptures do use that word; and it is often implied even where it is not written. “Duty” is not the highest or best of motives. Yet, it is our “duty” to obey and honor our God, though after we have done all, we are but “unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10). As Robert E. Lee taught his students, respecting every aspect of life, — “Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.” Even in the performance of duty to our God, there is delight. David sang about it in Psalm 19:7-11.

In the keeping of God’s statutes, in obeying his Word, in doing his will, we find great reward. — As we are enabled of the Triune Jehovah to trust and delight in him, our ever-gracious God, our souls are made to rejoice in the Lord. — As we are enabled of him to love one another, as we find ourselves walking in love, our very lives are sweetened by the love of the brethren. Every heaven born soul can truly say, with Paul, “I delight in the law of God after the inward man.”

The law of God in which we delight and by which we are ruled is the whole of his revealed will in Holy Scripture; and the law of God in which we delight is the whole of his will concerning our daily lives, as he makes it known to us by his Spirit. We have meat to eat that the world can never know. Our meat is to do the will of our God. Yet, if I do not render him the fruit of those powers by which I am made capable of serving him, then, according to the words of Malachi, I rob God!

If we do not utterly devote ourselves to him, the Lord our God declares, “Ye have robbed me!” — “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). — O, my soul, taste not, drink not except to the glory of God! — Whatever we do — whatever you do — whatever I do — let us “do all to the glory of God!” — To do less is to rob God.